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764
Presidential Address
time in its subsequent developments. During the eighteenth century, Philosophy claimed to have discovered Natural or Rational Religion, whom she endeavoured to place on the throne of her rivalthe Religion of the Christian Church. But towards the close of the century, the self-complacency of Reason was shaken to its foundations by Kant who drew from the lips of Reason herself an honest confession of her own limitations. But in his attempt to do so, Kant, like one of his predecessors, Descartes, was so methodical, that, after him, as after Descartes, his method, like that of Aristotle, became a fetish of Philosophy, with the result that no thinking was considered philosophical unless it was cast in the Aristotelian or Kantian mould. In truth, this is contrary to the very nature of Kant's philosophical teaching, which is rather a prolegomena to philosophy than philosophy itself. He shows that the traditional philosophy of Reason is legitimately only a philosophy of sense and understanding and that the true philosophy is one which recognizes other pathways to reality as well. Consequently, if the conclusion and not the method of Kantian philosophy should determine what Philosophy is, Philosophy is not methodology but every form of striving after wisdom'. And in this larger and truer sense of the word, Indian Philosophy does not cease to be philosophy, even if it is sometimes mixed with poetry or mythology. As the President of first Session of our Congress said in his inimitable way,
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1 I use the word 'methodology' more in the literary than in the technical sense.
